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Upgrades
Upgrades can be bought via the use of command points. There are two types of upgrades: hull and weapon upgrades only affect your own ship, while faction upgrades benefit your whole team. Hull upgrades Usage *Hull - Gives the best HP boost for most ships, and increases life against Torpedoes, Gauss Shell, and other effects that ignore Armor and Shield. Combines well with Armor. *Shield - The best HP boost for shield heavy ships, and repairs very fast at almost any location. *Armor - Combines well with Hull, and enhances regeneration. If the Emergency Repairs skill or a high level Repair bay are combined with Armor, you can achieve an effective repair rate higher than shields. *Radar - Having at least one ship with a high radar range is indispensable. Aside from being able to avoid flying into an ambush, it can combine with weapons range upgrades to allow long distance attacks. Harder to justify on larger ships with poor radar, as it doesn't scale very well for them. *Speed - Makes fast ships faster for better harassment and map control, and allows slow ships to move at a decent speed. An important late-game upgrade for all classes. Weapon upgrades Usage *Damage - Front loaded damage allows you to gain an early lead in damage dealt that a higher rate of fire cannot create nor circumvent, and reduce the amount of shots needed to kill. It can sometimes mean the difference between leaving something alive barely and killing it. *Range - With a longer range, you can possibly deal out unanswered damage. However, you will need to be able to see what you are shooting at somehow (unless the target is stationary, such as a turret). *Firing Rate - With a severely weakened enemy, you only care about firing the next shot to finish it, not how much damage it will do. Moreover, a higher firing rate will make it much harder to avoid shots through varying of the throttle and ship heading, and increase the consistency of special effects of turrets, such as the slowing of the disruptive turret. *Hullcrit - Both Damage and Firing Rate are basically equal in terms of the boost to DPS. Hullcrit is actually worse than either of them, even before considering that only hull damage is affected. That said, when combined with both Damage and Firing Rate, the damage dealt is tremendous. Pick this up as a third damage dealing upgrade if you're having trouble with fully upgraded Hull/Armor ships. *Shieldcrit - On the flipside, Shieldcrit is ideal for fast moving ships with thick shields. Since it also boosts shot travel speed, its actually an important upgrade for Range upgraded ships, and nearly essential for the Artillery ship. =Faction Upgrades= Forcefields, Rockets, and Torps Faction upgrades are unlocked at techlevels 5, 10 and 15. Usage *Rockets can give you some support in fighting other players, provided the creeps are actually flying by the areas where enemy players are passing through. Otherwise, there isn't much reason to pick them up. *Forcefields help creeps push further toward a base. They also make it a lot safer to try to help creeps push to turrets, and give great places to hide and retreat from danger. *Torpedoes should only be bought if your creeps are consistently making it to their turrets. Convoy, Titans, Adv Refinery Usage *Buy Convoy fast if you can maintain control over a wormhole. If everyone on the team pitches in 100 CP, it takes a minimum of 4 minutes to break even, though it can take longer if convoys are shot down, or if people take longer than others to invest their CP. *Titans add a lot of life to a creep formation, and tend to attract enemy creep fire before some of the smaller ships are targeted. That said, they give a potential 30 additional CP to the enemy. Titans shouldn't be bought unless your strategy involves pushing enemy creeps or holding them at bay. If the enemy creep has pushed to your base, and you already have shields, then you may need to purchase Titans to push them back. *Artillery ships render Shields and Titans nearly useless. Even if the lanes are spread out such that they won't all be hit, the Titans will feed the Artillery. In general, forgo creep upgrades against Artillery, unless the lanes are very far apart such as on confrontation. *If you are using a creep heavy push strategy, and have the crystal(s), Advanced Refinery is probably worth picking up. Strangely enough, you must purchase Titans before you can put CP into this. Adv Colonization, Prototype, Exp Armageddon Usage *If you decide to get Advanced Colonization, get it as soon as you can. It's very important for everyone to pitch in 300 CP ASAP if you're going to buy it, because it takes 12 minutes to make your 300 CP back (or 6 minutes if you have 2 planets). Games can go on for 45 minutes or longer, so this upgrade can be a huge benefit. It probably isn't worth getting if it isn't gotten fairly early on. Ask everyone immediately when the game starts whether or not to buy Advanced Colonization. *Prototype should not be bought haphazardly. If it means obtaining a Destroyer or Corvette Ultimate, it may be worth it. But the input equates to about one upgrade, assuming everyone puts in 400 with the passive skill scientific officer. If one person buys it on their own, they are depriving themselves of several upgrades. Upgrades off of your normal upgrade path might not seem like they are worth it, but buying level 5 hull, speed, armor, shield, hullcrit, or range can make a huge difference even if you've already maxed out your normal upgrades. *Upgraded Armageddon Missile should be bought before tech 21 in most cases. If you don't, you risk falling behind in damage dealt by Armageddon missiles if the enemy does buy this upgrade. Plus, this upgrade sends the enemy base to dangerously low HP levels much faster, making it easier to finish off with escort backed torpedo attacks, or Artillery shots. Category:Gameplay